Celebrated poet Marvin Bell's ninth major collection of poems is his most provocative and imaginative to date. Exploring the wisdom and genius of ignorance, fallibility and mutability with Zen-like detachment, Bell's new poems respond to the admonition, "Live as if you were already dead."
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PoetryLiterature has its heroes and its antiheroes, but now it has its first non-hero, the "dead man," who is the title character of the poems in The Book of the Dead Man. This incredible and puzzling person journeys through the limbo between the end of life and the beginning of death. As author Bell states in the book,"The dead man is perfected fallibility." Quotes by other people on the back cover imply that it is a spiritual...
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I hate hype, but I believe TBOTDM is essential reading for mortals. Much has already been made of the implications of the "form" of these poems. Okay, they're unique. But the interesting part is that the Dead Man sees things from both sides. . .and the dead man never lies. Take those propositions to your logic teacher and you'll soon be glad for a poet like Marvin Bell. Anyone who doesn't "get" poetry, or who loves poetry,...
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